CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

I hope to get an actual website... eventually... to post this on. But until then, I'm going to be posting it here on CAA.

Title: Eternal Legend
Summary: Enkil is the child of a vampire and his human wife. His father left when he was very young, leaving an odd pendant in his possession. His mother was killed by the villagers of the town they lived in and he was forced to flee for his life. Found and adopted by a family in the town of Capricorn he finally was able to lead a normal childhood without being shunned because of the vampire blood that runs through his veins.
Now, years later, his mind is filled with questions. Where's my father? Is he still alive? What is this pendant? Setting out to seek the answers to these questions he gets himself mixed up in something far bigger than he. (I suck at summaries. Does that sound interesting?)
Genre: I'd call it fantasy/adventure.

Please, leave your comments and criticism. As long as its constructive, I welcome criticism! Anything that'll help me improve, please don't be afraid to say it! And remember, I'm learning as I go. I hope to be better when I finish then when I started.

I hope to get the title page/cover up soon. But I wanted to go ahead and post it until I'm done working on it.

Also, and I don't know why, they loaded backwards. So if you'll please click on the pages below right to left <-- I'd really appreciate it!

Interesting. This is very interesting.

The art is very well done so far and it's very organized. I can't say but so much since it's only the first three pages, but I can say I certainly want to see more.

Very Good Jorb.

Very nice start! I think your layouts are excellent and easy to follow. It would be good to see some kind of textured screen tone, though. I think your soft b&w style is good, but toning will really make those panels pop.

You wanted this tip.

Pen tool - paths - trace a section fully - right click - create vector mask.

Then you will have a bodypart in a layer, makeing the brushes unable to get outside the paths you have made. You can go back to the layer to re-edit if you feel for it and it makes some coloring projects much easier.

For the text in the bubbles looking jaggy.

Resize the paneled page for your final output (web), then place the type. I've also found that placing the text is easier if the page is set to 72 DPI, as the font sizes are easier to handle.

Gypsy wrote:Very nice start! I think your layouts are excellent and easy to follow. It would be good to see some kind of textured screen tone, though. I think your soft b&w style is good, but toning will really make those panels pop.

Know of any tutorials for adding screen tones? That are easy to follow and simpl-ish to do?

Um ... not off the top of my head (I can't seem use tones myself *cries*). You may want to ask Mave or Ink about that one. Applying them in photoshop is really easy if you have a good understand of layers and masks (or even just layers) but I wouldn't know how to explain it in a simpl-ish way. I guess they're easy to add to a page, but I can't seem to wrap my head around how to use them ... if that makes sense ...

<.< >.> .... *shoots a flare up to attract someone who understands the b&w medium*

Hello! The panel layout is very good as it makes the story flow well.

If you intend to smooth out the lines and fonts in the long run, let us know what tools you're using to create these pages pls (scanned resolution size, graphic manipulation program (if any). That would also help us to help you with screentones. I'm guessing that your lines are created with pencils. Am I right?

Anyway, welcome to the club. Let's keep working hard together!

Okay, guys. Help me out? Here is what I do to make the pages:

First, I draw out my page with pencil, ink it, clean it up, and scan it in. I use Corel Paint Shop Pro X version 10.03.

I scan it in a gray scale color mode, because the lines are darkest and don't have any rainbow like lines showing (My scanner is pretty old. Dad hasn't gotten a new one in years, it could be due to the scanner, but I don't know). I set the resolution to 1200 dpi, the highest it'll go.

Then I save as a jpg image. Once I've fixed the image so I can color it, I use light and dark shades of gray to shade it in. I use the preset shape tool to add speech bubbles (or circles/ovals and add the lines later) and save. I open the image in paint, add in the text, save, re-open in paint shop, and touch up some of the coloring (I.E. the eyes, shadows, etc)

What should I do different? What can I do to make it look better? How do I add screen tones? Did that information help?

Hmm, this looks like a promising endeavor! Sadly I don't know anything about Corel Paint shop, but I can offer some general thoughts. First off, 300 dpi should be more than adequate to scan stuff at, (1200 is, well HUGE!!!), and of course, dropping the resolution to 72 dpi for web display is advisable. If you think you'll ever want to print your files, keep your originals at 300 dpi.

Old scanners work fine (mine's old and squeaky!), just make sure the glass is free of dust before scanning. I'm seeing some 'dirty splotches' as well, which is typical for scanned drawings. In photoshop, I adjust the levels and contrast of the image in order to make the lines darker and reduces the dirty splotches in white areas. I don't know if Corel calls these features by the same names, but they should have controls which will do the same. Look for them and play around. Maybe you can get your lines even darker before you begin to color.

And does Corel have a native file format? The reason I ask is, Jpegs are lossy by nature. In other words, everytime you save, you are compressing the file again, This causes artifacting from data loss, and well it looks icky. Done enough times, the image will become blurry and splotchy. You should work in a lossless file format and only create a jpeg copy of your file when you're ready to upload it to the web. Again, I don't know Corel, but it's gotta to have a native format and it should be lossless.

Well, I haven't learned to add screen tones yet, but I do think I've discovered a better way to scan them... if only I can remember it

But anyway, I've got two more pages drawn (it took me way too long to get them finished. I haven't been working on it. Shame on me! ) All I have to do is ink, scan, and shade them (and of course add the text) before they're finished. However, I'd like to get one more page drawn so I can post three more... er... I'm getting there. Just a little more time...

EDIT: Okay, so its only one page out of the two I drew and inked... but I couldn't sleep (at all) last night and this page was the only one I'd gotten scanned, so I just went ahead and shaded it. So I thought I'd post it, too. You won't really know much from it, but you meet four new characters and learn three of them's names! That's something, right?

I remembered what I did to scan it! The lines are darker this way, and I think it looks better... maybe?

Anyway, I tried a new text. What do you think of it? I think it needs to be a little smaller... don't you?

P.s. I forgot to resize it... since I haven't gotten Paint shop installed on my laptop (which I'm on currently) and I can't get on the desktop computer right now, I'll fix it later. But its still readable... Okay, it's fixed!

EDIT: Another day, anther page! Again, its displaying backwards so click them right to left <--

Ha. That's cute and funny. I like it!

Really good. I like it.

Yes, the art is looking muuuuch better now. Excellent job of cleaning and darkening the lineart.